But that’s okay. Accidents are just that—unavoidable and random. There’s absolutely nothing else that can be done, so we might as well shrug and accept our fate. When a poor kid gets flattened by an SUV, the only reasonable response is to sigh, feel sad for a moment, and then move on. After all, questioning the design of our roads or the size of our vehicles would be an affront to the gods of chance and the sacred right to drive anywhere, anytime.

Europeans might obsess over safety, but we know better: the universe writes its own traffic plan, and sometimes the ink is a little redder than we’d like…